new books by john grisham 2022

John Grisham Is Still Battling His Southern Demons

By David Marchese June 21, 2022

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“It was such a hard-right-wing, racist society that I grew up in. I’ve come a long way.”

By David Marchese

There are very few constants in life — and it sure feels as if the number is shrinking — but one thing readers of popular fiction can count on is that every year will bring a new John Grisham book, or two. With his latest, “Sparring Partners,” the prolific and megaselling novelist is offering his humble version of a changeup. The book, his 47th, is the 67-year-old’s first collection of novellas. It includes three separate stories, one of which features his old standby Southern-lawyer character Jake Brigance. But while his professional life has been marked by a certain steadfastness, his personal and political evolution wasn’t quite so smooth. “I’ve come a long way,” says Grisham, who was a lawyer and a politician before turning to writing. “Once I became a lawyer, most of my clients were poor people, working people, minority people who had no money. We were on one side of the street. On the other side of the street were the people with money. Real quick I realized where I stood in life and where I was going to be in life.”

With the exception of “Strawberry Moon,” the material in the new book feels to me like the kind of plots and subject matter that you normally render at full length. And, to be crass, I’ve also heard that novellas don’t sell as well as novels. So why opt for the form? Over the years, these stories keep lying around, and I realized that the birthdays are piling up and the stories are not being written. So, I said, OK, I’m going to pick out my three favorites and finish them. I’m tired of thinking about them. I emailed Stephen King and said, “You’ve done several collections of novellas; how did it work?” He said he also had a lot of stories, you’re not going to be able to write them all as novels, some don’t work as short stories, so you do something in the middle. That’s how it all came to pass. I can play around with a baseball book or a football book or short stories or a kids’ book in my spare time, but I know my readers want the legal thriller every fall.

When you know you’ve got to deliver a big new legal thriller every fall — and in between you’re often writing those other books — are you ever able to abandon an idea that isn’t working? Or do you just have to find a way to make it work? I’ve never had the situation where I wrote myself into a corner I couldn’t get out of. At the same time, with every book I reach a point late in the game where I have doubts about the story and get nervous, even frightened, about Who’s going to believe this stuff? I’m going through it right now with “The Boys From Biloxi.” My goal each year with each legal thriller is to write about 100,000 words. That’s going to produce a novel, when published, that’s about 350 pages. To me, that’s ideal. You don’t need a big thick book for a thriller. “The Boys From Biloxi” — I’m at 120,000 right now and sweating, because I have a lot left to cover to get to the end. So, yeah, those are issues that come up. But I cannot squeeze a novel out of every idea. A perfect example is the opioid crisis. It’s right down my alley because it’s tons of litigation, corporate bad behavior, all kinds of bad guys. I’ve been itching to write that book, but I haven’t been able to get my head around a story that I could do in 100,000 words. It’s just so big. Guantánamo’s another one. I’ve been collecting research for 20 years. We’ve kept prisoners down there for 15 years without charging them with any crime. There’s a lot of lawyers who spend time down there trying to correct a terrible situation. It’s also right down my alley because it’s the legal system, but again, I can’t get my head around that story.

This is a little left-field, but I was fascinated by the fact that as a young man, you held office in the Mississippi Legislature. Could the 28-year-old version of you be elected in Mississippi today? At that time I was — I’m not going to say conservative. I was a moderate Democrat. Today that person doesn’t exist in the South. If I ran today, I would hope that I would run as a progressive Democrat — and I would not be elected. I have friends who hold public office in Mississippi who had to switch from Democrat to Republican to keep their jobs. If you have the D by your name, you’re not going to be elected. It has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. Also, it ought to be against the law in any state for a 28-year-old to be elected to the state legislature. I see these guys — the guy from North Carolina?

Madison Cawthorn. Yeah. Just got beat. It shows you what happens when a 26-year-old who’s off leash gets elected. He needed to be called home. You’ve got to be at least 30 years old and have some maturity before you get that job. I didn’t do any damage in my eight years, but there’s not much of a record to brag about. I didn’t do a lot of good.

What was the most morally difficult decision you had to make as a politician or a practicing lawyer? I’ll tell you a story. A 15-year-old girl in my church got pregnant. Her parents were devastated. Strict Southern Baptist. Small town. They were terrified people were going to find out. They came to me before they went to the minister because they were talking about adoption, the laws. Abortion terrified them. The father was 15 years old, too, so getting married was out of the question. I remember thinking, These people are leaning on me way too much. I was a 27-year-old kid, one year out of law school. They think I’m wise. I’m not ready for this. The parents weren’t a whole lot older than I was — in their early 40s, I guess. They reached a point where they trusted me, and I’m thinking, I don’t want to be in this room. I finally said: “Let’s get the minister involved. You people need help big time, and I’m not giving it to you.” My point is, I realized that on the abortion issue, that was a decision to be made by that family — that girl and the parents and nobody else. Nobody else should be in the room.

Including the government? No government, no lawmaker, no judge. That’s when I began to realize what’s at stake with abortion. I’m opposed to abortion. I didn’t want her to get an abortion, because the baby was going to be healthy — and the baby did make a great gift for someone else. She was able to leave and go live with an aunt in another town, have the baby well cared for, adopt it out. She came back, the family rallied, the church rallied. Made the best of a bad situation, and somebody got a beautiful baby. But there were times when I was thinking the quickest solution would be an abortion. I didn’t say that, but it was a quandary I was in because I was getting way too much input. That had a big impact on me as a lawyer, because you realize the influence you have. The law degree is a powerful tool. You can do a lot of good things. That’s the fun part of being a lawyer, when you help people. I was not a very good lawyer.

Why not? You’ve got to be kind of tough on the business end, and I could never say no to people who were in trouble, especially people I knew in the community. When you take everything that walks in the door, you’re going to go broke. That was my downfall. At the same time, I had strong ambitions about being a skilled courtroom lawyer. That was my goal, inspired by some great old-fashioned country trial lawyers in Mississippi I knew. I was never afraid of going to court. Most lawyers are. A lot of them are afraid to try a case in front of a jury, but I thrived on that. I dreamed of being so good that people with really good cases — injury cases or wrongful-death cases or medical-malpractice cases — would come to me and I would have the chance to make some money, which I never did.

You said that you’re opposed to abortion. For religious reasons? I’ve just never been able to stomach the idea of abortion on demand or women having multiple abortions just because they get pregnant. And I’ve always thought that late-term abortion, partial-birth abortions were something that we should not tolerate because the fetus is viable. I’ve always been turned off by that notion of abortion. I guess it’s probably religious grounds. But at the same time you don’t know what you’re going to do until you’re in that situation. That’s when it becomes a matter of choice.

What political positions did you hold when you were 28 that you don’t hold now? Death penalty, for sure.

You used to believe in it? Big time. I’m in favor of tougher gun control. I am much more suspicious of the police and prosecutors because I’ve seen so many wrongful convictions. Also, race relations: I grew up in the Jim Crow South. A very segregated, racist society was almost in my DNA. It’s a long struggle to overcome that and to look back at the way I was raised and not be resentful toward my parents and other people who helped raise me for their extreme racism. It was such a hard right-wing, racist society that I grew up in. The Baptist Church was that way too back then. I’ve come a long way. I have a lot of friends and even kinfolk who never tried to move beyond the racism. But I try every day. It’s been an ongoing, gradual transformation. My wife was another factor, because she grew up in North Carolina, and it was not as hard-core racist as Mississippi. She and her parents were much more tolerant. So she had a big influence on me. You know, we’re all tribalists. We all want to be around our people or believe in our people, and it’s often too hard to get beyond that. It’s still a struggle for me.

Has your sense of the South as a literary setting changed? To my mind, the open resurgence of racist violence makes a book like “A Time to Kill” read even more disturbingly today than it did when I first read it in the mid-90s. It’s changed in many ways. That story is based on an actual assault that happened in the 1970s in a small town not too far from where I lived and went to law school. When I wrote that story, I was 30 years old and had never written before. I can’t tell you there was a lot of careful forethought with “A Time to Kill.” I didn’t think about the portrayal of Southern Blacks and Southern whites in a small town. That was just my world. At the same period of time, in 1988, I was back from my second term at the Legislature. We had a progressive young governor, a progressive young House speaker. We thought finally Mississippi could change things. We were on the cusp of this progressive revolution. We believed it. Thirty-four years later, it’s astonishing how far backward the state has gone. The politics there are very displeasing to me.

Let me shift gears: This could be apocryphal, but I heard that you and Michael Crichton used to have some one-upmanship over money. Each of you wanted to be paid a dollar more than the other guy. Is that true? In the 1990s, for about five years in a row, my agent would take my latest manuscript — “Pelican Brief,” “The Client,” “The Chamber,” “The Rainmaker” — to Hollywood, get the studios in a room and have an auction. And when they paid, they paid millions . I don’t know what was actually said because I wasn’t there, but it was like, “Crichton got this amount; we want more.” It was back and forth. We were gaming the system big time. It was working beautifully — until it stopped. I sold the film rights to “The Runaway Jury” in 1996 to New Regency for a record amount. I can’t get a fraction of that today. You can say, Well, we choked the golden goose, but all those films made money. Then Hollywood changed. I don’t understand that world. Nobody understands that world. There’s no rules. We learned years ago, do not believe a word until they start filming. “Runaway Jury” was actually the last big contract I got. I helped write the script, which was a huge mistake. Joel Schumacher was the director. We had Sean Connery, Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton ready to start filming. It was a done deal, and Joel Schumacher jumped off the bus. The whole cast walked away. It took years to make that movie.

Why was it a mistake to work on the script? I’m not a screenwriter. It’s not something I enjoy doing. One of the most frustrating parts is the teamwork. You get notes from people who don’t have a clue, who do not understand the basics of storytelling. You wonder if they even make movies. The worst note I got — it’s a great story. In 1993, ’94, somewhere in there, “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief” and “The Client” came out in the span of about 12 months. All three books were at the top of the list, along with “A Time to Kill,” which had been rediscovered. Things were hopping. I was finishing “The Chamber,” and this was a stupid thing we did: A big-time Hollywood guy said, “OK, we want to buy your next book right now sight unseen.” I sent the manuscript, what I had, and this studio honcho read the first draft of an incomplete manuscript and wasn’t too crazy about it. Which really pissed me off. Suddenly this guy’s a literary critic? He sent a faxed note, I believe, to my agent at the time and said, “We can’t buy this book for a movie unless Grisham will promise three love scenes and a happy ending.” [Laughs.] If I ever write a Hollywood tell-all, that’s the title of my book: “Three Love Scenes and a Happy Ending.”

Do you think about your critical legacy as a writer? When you get started in the business and you have some success, like I did with “The Firm,” you want to be taken seriously as a writer, but you have to be honest with yourself. You can’t sell books and be loved by critics. It’s not going to happen. There are very few literary authors who sell a lot of books. The best seller for a literary novel is 25,000 copies. Fifty max. If you do sell a lot of books, you’re dismissed by critics. So I decided a long time ago, I’ll take the money and run. You talk about legacy? I don’t care. I’m going to be dead and gone.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the Talk columnist.

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Author Interviews

What is certain in life death, taxes — and a new book by john grisham.

Andrew Limbong

John Grisham at his office in Charlottesville, Va. His new book is a sequel to The Firm , the book that turned him into a star. Donald Johnson/The New York Times/Doubleday hide caption

John Grisham at his office in Charlottesville, Va. His new book is a sequel to The Firm , the book that turned him into a star.

Just going by numbers alone, it's undeniable that John Grisham is a statesman of American letters. Since the beginning of his career, his goal has been focused on output.

"One smart decision I made way back then was to hurry up and write," he said in an interview with NPR. He's published 49 books, and has sold more than 400 million copies, according to his publicist. He's been in the game for more than three decades now.

And in this tenured position in the world of books, he's adjacent to the existential crises facing books today. He's part of a big lawsuit against the artificial intelligence company OpenAI for copyright infringement (he said he's not allowed to comment on it). People often ask him about his stance on books being pulled from schools and library shelves (he said it is "ridiculous" but doesn't keep a close eye on the news).

Mostly, though, he'd rather be writing.

He's now out with his latest, The Exchange . It's a sequel to 1991's The Firm , which was the book that turned Grisham into a writing star. When I asked him why, after all this time, is he revisiting The Firm, he simply said: "Well, we're always trying to angle a way to sell more books."

The Firm was first published when Grisham was juggling working as a lawyer and being a member of the state legislature in Mississippi. He'd start his days early and write in the mornings. His first book, A Time To Kill , didn't do so well — at first, at least. Not until after he wrote his follow up, The Firm , which was an immediate success. "It was overnight," he said. "Terribly exciting."

The book is about a young hotshot lawyer named Mitch McDeere. He isn't a criminal defense attorney, or a white collar prosecutor, or anything exciting like that. He's a tax lawyer. And he gets recruited into a secret law firm in Memphis that, surprise, surprise, is doing shady business with shady people, and Mitch finds himself caught between the mob and the FBI.

John Grisham and his wife Renee in 2004. "We kept our feet on the ground and we didn't change," said Grisham of finding fame. Michael Springer/Getty Images hide caption

John Grisham and his wife Renee in 2004. "We kept our feet on the ground and we didn't change," said Grisham of finding fame.

The immediate bestseller was pulpy and breezy enough that it was prime material for a 1993 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise. The movie was a hit, too, becoming the highest grossing R rated film that year . Suddenly, Grisham's work was a hot commodity in Hollywood: The Pelican Brief got turned into a movie. As did The Client . Then his first book, A Time To Kill .

"In the early 90s, things were really chaotic, but also a whole lot of fun. We were having a ball," he said of himself and his wife, Renee Grisham. But they also had their eyes towards the future — and on the cyclical nature of fame.

"We always said to each other, look, everything goes in cycles and nobody stays on top forever," he said. "Nothing is going to last forever. And so one of these days, this incredible journey is going to be over."

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Even as the machinations of Hollywood taste changed, and options for his books kept going nowhere, Grisham kept hurrying up and writing. The Exchange takes place 15 years after The Firm . Mitch and his wife Abby live in New York City with their two children. It's a bigger globe trotting book — the main legal concern is over a fictional bridge in Libya that Col. Muammar Gaddafi wants built.

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Not my job: legal thriller author john grisham gets quizzed on (men's) briefs.

But before the main thrust of the narrative, there's a prelude of sorts that involves Mitch going back to Memphis to do some pro bono work involving a man on death row. Before he can even get started on the case, the man dies — supposedly by suicide. We never really come back to this storyline in the book but it serves multiple functions: It lets the reader revisit some of the story beats of the first book, but it also touches on the core of what drives so much of Grisham's work — injustice.

In 2006, Grisham wrote his first non-fiction book called The Innocent Man , about a wrongfully convicted man on death row. Since then, he's taken up the cause of wrongful convictions. He's on the boards The Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, which helps get wrongfully convicted people out of prison. He is working on another book now, unsurprisingly. But it's a non-fiction collection about people spending decades in prison for someone else's crimes. "It happens all the time," he said.

Since the beginning of his career until now, not much has changed about his lifestyle, his writing process, or his demeanor. But what has shifted has been his faith in the jury system.

"We're supposed to trust the police and the prosecutors. We believe in those people, the judges. That's the system," he said. "And we want to believe that it always works and it doesn't.

Meghan Collins Sullivan edited the radio and digital versions of this story.

The Enduring Charm of John Grisham

O n a rack at the front of Burke’s Book Store in Memphis is a postcard showing the store in an earlier era, overhung by a billboard that’s no longer there. “Grisham is coming,” the billboard says in big red letters, next to a photo of the youthful lawyer-turned-author. His brow is knitted, mouth pursed in a half-smirk. Below him, you can see the line of people waiting for the store to open. John Grisham picks up the postcard and looks at it appreciatively. “Oh, yeah, I remember those days,” he says in his honey-thick drawl.

The picture on the postcard is from a book signing for The Chamber , in 1994. It’s a memento of the heady days of Grisham’s early success, when he released a succession of best-selling novels that became hit movies. People camped out in line for his book signings, Hollywood studios got in bidding wars for his film rights, and stores could barely keep his novels in stock. Many things have changed in the intervening decades. The book business has fragmented and fallen on hard times, while the legal arena Grisham writes about has never seemed more tormented, with everyone from liberal reformers to an indicted former President calling the criminal-justice system’s legitimacy into question.

What hasn’t changed is Grisham’s steady commitment to giving readers what they want. At 68, he may no longer be publishing’s fresh young hotshot; his books sell a fraction of the copies that they used to, and it’s been 19 years since he had a feature film made. Yet every fall, like clockwork, Grisham publishes a new legal thriller, and every fall it shoots to the top of the bestseller list.

Since breaking out with The Firm in 1991, Grisham has released 48 consecutive New York Times No. 1 bestsellers, a feat no other writer has matched. On Facebook, where he has more than a million followers, fans gush with anticipation. (“Can’t wait!” “I always get excited when October comes around so I can get the new one!” “I’m so ready!”) “He doesn’t get enough attention, he’s taken for granted by practically everybody, but he’s had a steady output of books that people always read,” says the longtime film and literary critic Janet Maslin. “He’s very disciplined, very serious, and really careful to be able to reach everybody. He never shows off. His books aren’t polarizing. They’re just dependably good.”

This month, Grisham looks to extend his winning streak by going back to the beginning. His new thriller, The Exchange , is a sequel to The Firm , the legal thriller set in Memphis that established him as a force in publishing and Hollywood alike. The movie version released 30 years ago, starring Tom Cruise as lawyer Mitch McDeere, remains his highest-grossing adaptation. His publisher says the new book was inspired in part by Cruise’s comeback turn in Top Gun: Maverick last year. Its release is a milestone that has Grisham feeling reflective. “When I started writing the book in January of this year, I really got nostalgic,” he tells me.

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He’s not the only one. For a mix of commercial and cultural reasons, a late-career Grisham renaissance may be in the offing. A wave of movie-critic thinkpieces have heralded a turn back to the type of adult dramas that made him one of his era’s defining genre writers. “It’s Time to Bring Back the ‘90s Legal Thriller,” a writer for GQ recently argued , while the New York Times ran a nostalgic reflection on the era “When John Grisham Movies Were King.” The youngest Gen Xers are reaching the peak of their consumer power, sparking a wave of 90s nostalgia. And after decades where Hollywood turned away from adult dramatic fare, the studios are turning back. Feature films of Grisham’s novels Calico Joe , The Confession , The Partner and The Racketeer are all in development, while several others are being turned into TV series, according to his agent, David Gernert, who says there’s more studio interest in Grisham's work than ever before. “The business changed and the studios were not making ‘John Grisham movies’ for a while,” Gernert says. “Now everything’s come full circle.”

With over 400 million copies sold, Grisham’s books have shaped the way millions see the law and its discontents, tackling themes like racial violence, corporate greed, environmental destruction and capital punishment. By his own account, he is obsessed with injustice, and often takes a novel as an opportunity to explore an issue. But he never wants readers to feel they’re being lectured to, he tells me. “I don’t spend a lot of time delivering messages,” he says. “People take the stories in different ways. It’s often fun to watch people read themes into the stories, about loyalty and forgiveness and greed or whatever. I just want to tell a story. I want to tell a story in such a way that the reader is caught up in it, and the pages turn.”

Grisham’s high forehead is wrinkled now, his once-dark hair gone white, but he still has that sardonic gaze, the lawyerly stare, that graced his book jackets at the beginning of his rise. He is a man of strong habits and intense loyalties. He’s had the same agent and publisher for decades, and he still comes back to the same handful of Southern independent bookstores that supported him when he was a struggling lawyer and politician with no novels to his name. On this late August morning, he’s come to Burke’s to see the owners, his old friends Corey and Cheryl Mesler, who—like every bookstore, chain store, and Walmart in the country—are preparing for his next book to drop.

“Mitch is back!” Grisham tells Corey Mesler, an aging hipster in a fedora and Hawaiian shirt. 

“Is Mitch in Memphis at all in this book?” Mesler asks.

“He’s in Memphis briefly. Just to say hello.”

“And then the story moves elsewhere. He’s based in New York now. It’s 15 years later, so he’s 41 years old now, living the good life in New York City, a big international lawyer.”

“And something happens,” Mesler prompts.

“Something happens,” Grisham chuckles. “There might be some dead bodies.”

“Is Tom Cruise too old to play it?” Mesler asks.

“He’s about 60, right? But he looks 40. He looks great. The rumor is that he’s reading the book now.”

Memphis, Grisham says, is functionally his hometown. He grew up in several small towns in Arkansas and Mississippi, all within an hour or two. “We did everything in Memphis—we shopped in Memphis, we came to restaurants in Memphis, we came to Memphis for parties,” he says. Grisham was born on a cotton farm, his father a sharecropper. He remembers picking cotton as a young child, his fingers bleeding. He put himself through college and law school and scraped by for a time in private practice in northwest Mississippi, hustling for clients. (Grisham has said that Jake Brigance, the small-town lawyer of his first novel A Time to Kill , who was played in the movie adaptation by Matthew McConaughey, is largely autobiographical.) 

A couple of years out of law school, Grisham got himself elected as a Democrat to the Mississippi House of Representatives. As he tells it, he ran for office because he wanted to end the state’s shameful status as the only one in the union not to offer public kindergarten. In his spare time—starting at 5:30 each morning—he drafted a novel in longhand, inspired by a court scene he’d witnessed, about a Black man who takes the law into his own hands after his daughter is brutally raped by racist rednecks, and the lawyer who defends him. 

A Time to Kill was barely published. An imprint of an obscure Christian press printed 5,000 copies, and Grisham implored local bookstores to stock it. The book attracted little notice, but Grisham was already at work on another he hoped would be more commercial: the tale of a Harvard-educated tax lawyer from a humble background who moves to Memphis to work for a mysterious firm, only to find himself caught between the Chicago Mob and the FBI. “I set the book in Memphis because I hadn’t been anywhere else,” Grisham tells me. “I was 33 years old. I’d never traveled anywhere.” (His only trip out of the country had been to the Cayman Islands, another locale that figures prominently in The Firm .) Locating the story in a sleepy Southern city also made it more plausible that a law firm whose attorneys have a habit of turning up dead could sidestep scrutiny. “People have always said, ‘Why’d you put the book in Memphis?’ Well, that’s kind of the story.”

The Firm still didn’t have a publisher when a Hollywood scout smuggled the manuscript to Los Angeles, sparking an improbable bidding war and a $600,000 contract with Paramount Pictures. By the time the book was published by Doubleday in 1991, it was hotly anticipated. Still, no one was prepared for what came next. “The book just started to sell immediately,” says Gernert, who was an editor at Doubleday before becoming Grisham’s agent. “I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. The very first day it hit the marketplace, I got back from lunch and I had all these messages saying it was flying out of the stores.” Gernert recalls walking down Fifth Avenue with Grisham, passing by multiple bookstores, and at each one, watching a customer pick the book up off the front table and take it to the register. “John turned to me and said, ‘Is this normal?’ And I said, ‘No!’” The book stayed on the bestseller list for nearly a year and sold more than seven million copies. 

From To Kill a Mockingbird to The Merchant of Venice , there have always been dramas about the legal system, points out Scott Turow, whose smash hit Presumed Innocent came out in 1987, helping to create the market for legal thrillers that Grisham cashed in on. Books like theirs were different partly in the way they focused on the personal lives of lawyers. The Firm had a separate publicity campaign dedicated to the legal profession, and many of Grisham’s readers are attorneys. (While reporting this story, I learned for the first time that my own brother, a lawyer in Denver, entered the field in part because of a Grisham book he read in high school.) Turow believes such books struck a nerve in an era when authority was no longer unquestionable, and issues once considered unspeakable were being put up for debate. “In the world I grew up in, in the 1950s, father knew best and you didn’t talk about religion or politics at the dinner table,” Turow tells me. Once that changed, “for better or worse, the courts emerged as the arbiter of values.”

It was on the publicity tour for The Firm , Grisham tells me, that he picked up a bit of wisdom that would define his career: he overheard a publishing executive mention that the biggest authors—Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Sidney Sheldon—tended to release a book every year. “It should be obvious to someone like me, who’s a big reader, somebody who wants to write bestsellers, but I’d never thought about that,” Grisham says. “And I thought, that makes a lot of sense. I want to be a big writer. So I hustled back to the farm in Oxford and finished The Pelican Brief in no time.”

Grisham tells the story with charming humility, as a series of lucky breaks for which he’s everlastingly grateful. But it is also a story of the purest type of publishing success: a book by a nobody that succeeded almost entirely on its own merits. The Firm changed everything for Grisham. He left the law and never looked back. A Time to Kill was reprinted and became another hit. For years, he and his wife, Renee, would refer to “BF” and “AF”—before The Firm and after The Firm . But it was his discipline and consistency in the subsequent years that made him enduringly rich and famous.

In the wake of his meteoric success, Grisham was determined to guard his privacy. After a few years in Oxford, Miss., he moved his family to a large plot of land outside Charlottesville, Va., and has been there ever since. (He and Renee also split their time between several other properties. Writing has made Grisham very rich.) Due to the solitary nature of the profession, even the world’s most famous writer rarely gets recognized in public. Grisham likes it that way. “It’s the perfect degree of fame,” he tells me as we walk down the street in Memphis. “I tell people I’m a famous writer in a country where nobody reads.”

Grisham’s routine hasn’t changed in many years. Starting on Jan. 1, he holes up in an outbuilding on his property to begin writing that year’s legal thriller. Beginning around 7 a.m., he types on a computer disconnected from the internet, typically writing about 1,000 words per day. He begins by going over the previous day’s work, and he is usually done by noon. He works from an extensive outline. “When I write the first scene in January, I know what the last scene is going to be,” he says. “That takes some work to get there. But if you know that, it’s really hard to get lost.” In addition to the annual legal thriller, he sometimes puts out a second book he was moved to write that year.

All he ever wanted, Grisham says, was to make a living. Had writing not proved a path to that goal, as is the case for most aspiring writers, he doubts he would have continued in legislative politics, but he imagines he would have run for judge. “A judgeship was financial security,” he says. “I had a nice base politically in my home county, and I had served as a city judge in my hometown and liked that.” Under a Democratic President, Clinton or more likely Obama, he thinks he could have then successfully lobbied for a federal judgeship.

Politics, Grisham says, separated him from his conservative Southern Baptist upbringing, as white Southern churches in the Moral Majority era became increasingly affiliated with right-wing Republicanism. Today he is a loyal Democrat—Renee was a Hillary Clinton superdelegate in 2008—who is getting more liberal as he ages, particularly when it comes to issues of race. For years, he tells me, he resisted the idea of taking down Confederate statues, but lately he’s had a change of heart. “Over time I’ve come to realize how offensive that would be to a Black person, to have to drive by Robert E. Lee’s statues,” he says. “Growing up in the South, the war is so horribly romanticized. It’s taken a while to realize how bad that was.” Grisham was in high school when his Mississippi district became the last one in the state to integrate, 16 years after Brown v. Board of Education .

In 2016, Grisham assumed Donald Trump would never appeal to the moralistic Christian conservatives he grew up with. “Boy, was I wrong.“ He worries that the constant drama that keeps the former President on the front page is bad for America and the Democratic Party alike. A passionate advocate for the wrongfully convicted and opponent of the death penalty, he sits on the board of the Innocence Project and speaks frequently about criminal-justice issues. But he doesn’t tweet or otherwise wade into the public discourse. “He’s your basic good guy, low-key, relaxed, but with a strong social conscience and equally strong opinions,” his longtime friend Stephen King tells me in an email. “We both get sent books for blurbs. About one—I won’t say which one—he cried indignantly, ‘It’s a train wreck!’ And he was right.”

Grisham walks down Memphis’s Union Avenue and turns the corner onto Front Street, past the Cotton Exchange, where Mitch, in The Firm , meets his accomplice Tammy as they’re planning his turn against his mob-front law firm. There’s a plaque on the wall of the stately old stone building: JOHN GRISHAM, it reads in raised bronze letters, accompanied by several lines of text about his smash success and connection to the city.

“I had nothing to do with it!” Grisham says of the plaque. The mayor at the time showed up at one of his marathon book signings with a proclamation, eager to grab a piece of Grisham’s exploding fame for the city. (Was this the book signing where he had to put his arm in an ice bucket every few hours? Or the one where, meeting a man who called himself Memphis’s first Black chiropractor, Grisham had the fan accompany him backstage to crack his back so he could go on signing? Or the one where he learned a woman several hours from the front of the line had gone into labor and dashed back to sign her book so she could go to the hospital, or the one the following year where the same woman came back with her baby? Eventually, he had to stop doing signings altogether.)

Many scenes in The Firm are set at the Peabody hotel, a Memphis landmark that pops up in other Grisham novels as well. Grisham had his senior prom here, in 1973, and his sister-in-law was married here. The hotel is known for the ducks that spend the day swimming in its lobby fountain, a tradition that stems from a manager’s drunken stashing of his live decoys in the 1930s. Today the ducks are trained to walk a red carpet to the fountain from the elevator in an elaborate, twice-daily “ceremony,” attended by a full time “duckmaster” and a large crowd of tourists. The whole hotel is duck-themed, from the logo to the duck-shaped soaps in the guest rooms. Nothing could be more Southern, it seems to me, than to take a drunken prank and sacralize it into a hallowed tradition.

In The Exchange , Mitch returns to Memphis on a legal errand and stays at the Peabody, sending the 41-year-old on a trip down memory lane that serves as a flashback summary of the first novel’s plot. Mitch seeks out the building that housed his old firm, only to find that it has “been renovated, renamed, and was now packed with condos advertising views of the river.” Rounding the corner, Grisham and I come upon the building. This one boasts no commemorative plaque. Sure enough, a sign on the first story boasts, “All New Luxury Apartments!”

Other than the brief trip to Memphis, the sequel has little connection to the plot of The Firm . The early pilgrimage to Memphis turns out to be a red herring; Mitch never returns. “It was a big issue in the story,” Grisham says of the Memphis detour. He wrote the scene there intending to take it out, he says, but his inner circle of first readers—Renee, Gernert, his publisher Suzanne Herz—enjoyed it too much to let it go. 

The Exchange takes place largely in New York City, where Mitch is a partner at a massive international law firm, and Gaddafi’s Libya, where he goes on behalf of a client, only for things to go awry. The backstory that lent tension to the young striver of the first book has been ironed flat: Mitch’s outlaw brother and mentally ill mother are offstage, living peacefully in Florida; the in-laws who once tormented him now help out with the kids. Though Mitch gets entangled in high-stakes international intrigue, nobody sees fit to even mention that his unusual past might have something to do with it, and indeed it does not. We even learn that Mitch lived for several years in Italy, yet the Mafia whose grasp he barely escaped in the first book is nowhere to be found. There are enough undropped shoes to fill a closet. I kept turning pages, expecting a twist that never came. This version of Mitch seems less like the character from The Firm and more like a generic action hero—a Tom Cruise character. And the ending feels less like a resolution than a cliffhanger, a cheap setup for the next sequel. Publisher’s Weekly called The Exchange “disappointing” and “a letdown.”

I tell Grisham I found the book perplexing. “I kept thinking the Mob was going to come back,” I say. He and I are talking in the Peabody’s History Room, a memorabilia-lined chamber down the hall from the ballroom where he had his senior prom.

Grisham, in his disarming way, agrees with me. “That’s the biggest problem with the book,” he says, with more zeal than distress, as if congratulating me for solving a puzzle. “Fifteen years later, where’s the Mafia? That’s a huge problem.” Here he is, arguably the most famous writer in America, basically admitting that his new book makes no sense, yet he does so merrily—with the good humor, perhaps, of an author who knows he’s essentially review-proof. It’s a Grisham book; people will buy it; people will enjoy it, flaws and all; who am I to take that from them?

“The Mob never forgets,” Grisham continues, making my critique for me. “I mean, he stole a bunch of money from them!” The Exchange does a decent job of explaining what happened to Mitch’s old partners at Bendini, Lambert and Locke, but they were only the Mob’s lawyers, he continues. “The Chicago Mob’s still there. And I lost sleep over that, and talked to David, my agent, a lot about, you know, is this plausible? [Mitch is] walking down the streets of Manhattan like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s at a big law firm. Is his life really that safe? I decided to let it slide and see how many people comment on it. I think it works as is. But you do have that nagging question.” 

Grisham says he cannot bear to read his old books, which may account for some of the puzzling discontinuity in The Exchange . In his young-adult series, Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer , he was constantly having mistakes spotted by 10-year-olds, he tells me. Embarrassed, he hired someone to read the books for him. Even his staunchest supporters don’t try to claim he’s a great writer. John Evans, the proprietor of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., another of the independent bookstores Grisham has helped keep in business since the 1990s, tells me that Grisham’s charm is his unpretentiousness. “He doesn’t make any pretense that it’s a literary novel, and that has a charm to it,” Evans tells me. “He wants them to be read and enjoyed, and he’s not trying to do anything other than that.”

For Grisham, who owes his career to The Firm , returning to the material was a daunting prospect. “I was afraid to bring Mitch back because, you know, he’ll always be the guy in my first big book,” he says. “At the same time, you can’t take this stuff too serious. Let’s bring him back and have some fun. I like the story, now that it’s done. And there’s a possibility of doing it again."— With reporting by Julia Zorthian

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Ryan Steck's The Real Book Spy

Full coverage of all your favorite thriller authors, and their characters, unlike anywhere else on the web , a book spy review: ‘the boys from biloxi’ by john grisham.

12-year-olds Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco used to be the best of friends. Having grown up together in the Gulf Coast city of Biloxi, Mississippi, the two young men were both baseball stars, dominating Little League with dreams of playing in the Major Leagues one day. That would never happen, though, and as fate would have it—they soon find themselves, and their families, on opposite sides of the law . . . and the courtroom.

Hugh Malco’s father became the boss of the Biloxi criminal underground. Hugh, having spent his formidable teenage years observing his father, found that he too enjoyed the nightlife, living it up in his father’s nightclubs, embracing everything that life had to offer. Meanwhile, Keith Rudy spent his life walking in the opposite direction. Instead of accompanying his childhood friend down the road of crime and greed, he followed in his father’s footsteps and went to law school. Lance Rudy is considered a legendary prosecutor in those parts, so for Keith, it means he has big shoes to fill if he’s going to ever outgrow his old man’s shadow.

In many ways, what Grisham delivers here, isn’t so much a story of Good vs. Evil, but rather a look at how two people with similar starts—both descended from Croatian immigrants, in this case—are ultimately pulled down such different paths. In some ways, it was foreshadowed at the beginning. Both boys were star ballplayers but on opposite teams, and eventually, in their mid-thirties, both Keith and Hugh are on opposite sides of the conflicts plaguing their small Mississippi town. Hugh, having learned from his father, profits off of the rampant gambling, prostitution, and drug usage. Keith, on the other hand, is hellbent on finishing what his father started by finally cleaning up the streets once and for all. And that pits both boys and their families against one another in a dangerous battle that, one way or another, will have unforgivable consequences.

Admittingly, this is not Grisham’s fastest novel in recent memory. And while some will no doubt measure pacing as a defining trait for classifying a book as a “thriller,” to simply dock points for this being more of a slow-burn story feels unfair. There are a lot of backstories to clear here, but every sentence adds to the overall conflict and war between the two families, and for that to work — for readers to feel connected and a part of both Hugh and Keith’s journey — Grisham takes the necessary time to frame his setting, conflict, and cast perfectly, all leading to a riveting courtroom showdown, where the author has always excelled.

John Grisham delivers a magnificent story told from two sides of the law while mixing in messages of hope, greed, loyalty, and the difficulties of growing up. The Boys from Biloxi is as powerful as it is memorable. It’s also one of the author’s best books (outside of his Jake Brigance series), leaving very little doubt that after a couple of misfires, John Grisham is once again back on top, right where you’d expect the King of the legal thriller to sit after such an illustrious career.

Book Details

Author: John Grisham Pages: 464 (Hardcover) ISBN : ‎ 0385548923 Publisher : ‎ Doubleday Release Date: October 18, 2022 Real Book Spy Rating : 8.75/10

Praised as “One of the hardest working, most thoughtful, and fairest reviewers out there” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline, Ryan Steck has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). Steck also works full-time as a freelance editor and is building a growing community on Twitch . His debut thriller, FIELDS OF FIRE , which #1 New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr says “ will leave you speechless and begging for more,” is now available. For more information, be sure to follow him on Twitter and Facebook . And to take part in free, exclusive BOOK CLUBS each month, join The Real Book Spy on Discord .

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In-Depth Stories

THE EXCHANGE, John Grisham's Highly-Anticipated Sequel to THE FIRM, to Publish Fall 2023

John Grisham, Photo © Donald Johnson

This fall, Doubleday will publish the sequel to  John   Grisham ’s #1 bestseller THE FIRM . The new legal thriller, THE EXCHANGE: After The Firm , marks the return of Mitch McDeere and will be published on October 17, 2023 and the exciting news were announced on CBS Mornings last week.

More than 30 years after “The Firm” helped put @JohnGrisham on the map, the prize-winning author is releasing a sequel, titled “The Exchange.” He told @VladDuthiersCBS that in the new book, Mitch’s life “gets very complicated.” pic.twitter.com/a43ucKGqeK — CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) March 29, 2023

“When last seen in THE FIRM, Mitch McDeere and his wife Abby were fleeing Memphis with the bad guys in hot pursuit,” says  Grisham . “Now they’re back, fifteen years later, and living in New York where Mitch is an international lawyer and a partner in a mega-firm. His work takes him across the globe, and not always to safe places. During a trip to Libya, his trusted associate is kidnapped, and an execution is threatened unless an enormous ransom is paid.  Only Mitch can facilitate the exchange and I hope readers have as much fun with the novel as I am writing it.”

“To have  John   Grisham ’s 49 th  book return to the world of Mitch and Abby McDeere is truly a full-circle moment,” says  Grisham ’s publisher, Suzanne Herz. “Over thirty years ago  John  crafted a brilliant thriller filled with deadly secrets, corporate intrigue, and an unforgettable fictional hero. THE FIRM   defined the legal thriller genre and has stood the test of time. Readers will be thrilled to see what happens next to Mitch in THE EXCHANGE.”

THE FIRM, a landmark publication, has never gone out of print since it was first published in 1991. Grisham’s first bestseller stayed on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for nearly a year and was adapted into a film starring Tom Cruise, upon which point it became the highest-grossing John Grisham adaptation to date. It was the film that allowed Grisham to walk away from his law practice to become the bestselling author we know him to be today.

About John Grisham John   Grisham is the author of numerous #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include THE BOYS FROM BILOXI, THE JUDGE’S LIST, SOOLEY, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A TIME FOR MERCY, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.  Grisham  is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. When he’s not writing,  Grisham  serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.  Grisham  lives on a farm in central Virginia.

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Sparring Partners

By john grisham, by john grisham read by jeff daniels , ethan hawke , january lavoy and john grisham, category: short stories | suspense & thriller, category: short stories | suspense & thriller | audiobooks.

Feb 28, 2023 | ISBN 9780593469491 | 5-3/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780593469491 --> Buy

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May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780385549325 | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 --> | ISBN 9780385549325 --> Buy

May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780385549332 | ISBN 9780385549332 --> Buy

May 31, 2022 | 599 Minutes | ISBN 9780593632345 --> Buy

May 31, 2022 | 600 Minutes | ISBN 9780593632338 --> Buy

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Feb 28, 2023 | ISBN 9780593469491

Apr 25, 2023 | ISBN 9780593470909

Jun 07, 2022 | ISBN 9780593632369

May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780385549325

May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780385549332

May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780593632345

599 Minutes

May 31, 2022 | ISBN 9780593632338

600 Minutes

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About Sparring Partners

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favorite storyteller has several surprises in store. “Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned. In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request.  The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself? By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favorite storyteller has several surprises in store.   “Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now. Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned. In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request.  The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself? By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

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Also by john grisham.

About John Grisham

John Grisham is the author of thirty novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and six novels for young readers.

Product Details

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“John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got in the United States these days.” — The New York Times Book Review “Grisham’s work—always superior entertainment—is evolving into something more serious, more powerful, more worthy of his exceptional talent.” — The Washington Post   “The law, by its nature, creates drama, and a new Grisham promises us an inside look at the dirty machineries of process and power, with plenty of entertainment.” — Los Angeles Times “A legal literary legend.” — USA Today

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What could be more intense than a thriller by John Grisham? How about three novellas in one book? Your summer reading list just got a boost.

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Place of Birth:

HOMECOMING (1) It was one of those raw, windy, dreary Monday afternoons in February when gloom settled over the land and seasonal depression was rampant. Court was not in session. The phone wasn’t ringing. Petty criminals and other potential clients were busy elsewhere with no thoughts whatsoever of hiring lawyers. The occasional caller was more likely to be a man or woman still reeling from holiday overspending and seeking advice about unpaid credit card accounts. Those were quickly sent next door, or across the square, or anywhere. Jake was at his desk upstairs, making little progress with the stack of paperwork he’d been neglecting for weeks, even months. With no court or hearings scheduled for days, it should have been a good time to catch up with the old stuff—the fish files that every lawyer had for some reason said yes to a year ago and now just wanted to go away. The upside of a small-town law practice, especially in your hometown, was that everyone knew your name, and that was what you wanted. It was important to be well thought of and well liked, with a good reputation. When your neighbors got in trouble, you wanted to be the man they called. The downside was that their cases were always mundane and rarely profitable. But, you couldn’t say no. The gossip was fierce and unrelenting, and a lawyer who turned his back on his friends would not last long. His funk was interrupted when Alicia, his current part-time secretary, chimed in through his desk phone. “Jake, there’s a couple here to see you.” A couple. Married but wanting to get unmarried. Another cheap divorce. He glanced at his daily planner though he knew there was nothing. “Do they have an appointment?” he asked, but only to remind Alicia that she shouldn’t be bothering him with the foot traffic. “No. But they’re very nice and they say it’s really urgent. They’re not going away, said it wouldn’t take but a few minutes.” Jake loathed being bullied in his own office. On a busier day he would take a stand and get rid of them. “Do they appear to have any money?” The answer was always no. “Well, they do seem rather affluent.” Affluent? In Ford County. Somewhat intriguing. Alicia continued, “They’re from Memphis and just passing through, but, again, they say it’s very important.” “Any idea what it is?” “No.” Well, it wouldn’t be a divorce if they lived in Memphis. He ran through a list of possibilities—Grandma’s will, some old family land, maybe a kid busted for drugs over at Ole Miss. Since he was bored and mildly curious and needed an excuse to avoid the paperwork, he asked, “Did you tell them that I’m tied up in a settlement conference call with a dozen lawyers?” “No.” “Did you tell them I’m due in federal court over in Oxford and can only spare a moment or two?” “No.” “Did you tell them that I’m slammed with other appointments?” “No. It’s pretty obvious the place is empty and the phone isn’t ringing.” “Where are you?” “I’m in the kitchen, so I can talk.” “Okay, okay. Make some fresh coffee and put ’em in the conference room. I’ll be down in ten minutes.” (2) The first thing Jake noticed was their tans. They had obviously been somewhere in the sun. No one else in Clanton had a tan in February. The second thing he noticed was the woman’s smart short haircut, with a touch of gray, stylish and obviously expensive. He noticed the handsome sports coat on the gentleman. Both were well dressed and nicely groomed, a departure from the usual walk-ins. He shook their hands as he got their names. Gene and Kathy Roupp, from Memphis. Late fifties, quite pleasant, with confident smiles showing rows of well-maintained teeth. Jake could easily picture them on a Florida golf course living the good life behind gates and guards. “What can I do for you folks?” Jake asked. Gene flashed a smile and went first. “Well, sad to say, but we’re not here as potential clients.” Jake kept it loose with a fake smile and an aw-shucks shrug, as if to say, What the hell? What lawyer needs to get paid for his time? He’d give them about ten more minutes and one cup before showing them the door. “We just got back from a month in Costa Rica, one of our favorites. Ever been to Costa Rica?” “No. I hear it’s great.” He’d heard nothing of the sort but what else could he say? He would never admit that he had left the United States exactly once in his thirty-eight years. Foreign travel was only a dream. “We love it down there, a real paradise. Beautiful beaches, mountains, rain forests, great food. We have some friends who own houses—real estate is pretty cheap. The people are delightful, educated, almost all speak English.” Jake loathed the game of travel trivia because he’d never been anywhere. The local doctors were the worst—always bragging about the hottest new resorts. Kathy was itching to move along the narrative and chimed in with “The golf is incredible, so many fabulous courses.” Jake didn’t play golf because he was not a member of the Clanton Country Club. Its membership included too many doctors and climbers and families with old money. He smiled and nodded at her and waited for one of them to continue. From a bag he couldn’t see she whipped out a pound of coffee in a shiny can and said, “Here’s a little gift, San Pedro Select, our favorite. Incredible. We haul it back by the case.” Jake took it to be polite. In lieu of cash fees, he had been paid with watermelons, fresh venison, firewood, repairs to his cars, and more bartered goods and services than he cared to remember. His best lawyer buddy, Harry Rex Vonner, had once taken a John Deere mower as a fee, though it soon broke down. Another lawyer, one who was no longer practicing, had taken sexual favors from a divorce client. When he lost the case, she filed an ethics complaint alleging “substandard performance.” Anyway, Jake admired the can and tried to read the Spanish. He noticed they had not touched their coffee, and he was suddenly worried that perhaps they were connoisseurs and his office brew wasn’t quite up to their standards. Gene resumed with “So, two weeks ago we were at one of our favorite eco-lodges, high in the mountains, deep in the rain forest, a small place with only thirty rooms, incredible views.” How many times might they use the word “incredible”? “And we were having breakfast outdoors, watching the spider monkeys and parakeets, when a waiter stopped by our table to pour some more coffee. He was very friendly—” “People are so friendly down there and they love Americans,” Kathy interjected. How could they not? Gene nodded at the interruption and continued, “We chatted him up for a spell, said his name was Jason and that he was from Florida, been living down there for twenty years. We saw him again at lunch and talked to him some more. We saw him around after that and always enjoyed a friendly chat. The day before we were to check out, he asked us to join him for a glass of champagne in a little tree-house bar. He was off-duty and said the drinks were on him. The sunsets over the mountains are incredible, and we were having a good time, when all of a sudden he got serious.” Gene paused and looked at Kathy, who was ready to pounce with “He said he had something to tell us, something very confidential. Said his name was not really Jason and he wasn’t from Florida. He apologized for not being truthful. Said his name was really Mack Stafford, and that he was from Clanton, Mississippi.” Jake tried to remain nonchalant but it was impossible. His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. The Roupps were watching closely for his reaction. Gene said, “I take it you know Mack Stafford.” Jake exhaled and wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, I’ll be damned.” “He said you guys were old friends,” Gene added. Stunned, Jake was still grasping for words. “I’m just glad he’s alive.” “So you know him well?” “Oh yes, quite well.”

Listening to an audiobook is a particularly intimate activity—oftentimes, it’s just you and the narrator in your ears, with the rest of the world around you oblivious to the internal experience and emotions you’re having. When that voice or voices are already familiar to you, it’s often easier to immerse yourself in the narrative, no […]

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The 20 best books by John Grisham, the bestselling author of legal thrillers like "A Time to Kill" and "The Pelican Brief"

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• John Grisham is the master of the courtroom thriller. He's written 28 number-one bestselling novels.
• You'll find his 20 best books below, according to their Goodreads ratings.
• Read more: The best new beach reads for 2022

If you think of a heart-pumping legal thriller, you probably picture John Grisham, one of the most successful authors in modern history.

Since his debut novel, " A Time to Kill ," earned him mainstream popularity, Grisham has written dozens of courtroom thrillers  — including 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers . " The Firm ," Grisham's second book, once spent 47 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. And, for the next two decades, he was the author of one of the 10 bestselling novels of the year. 

Below, you'll find Grisham's 20 most unmissable books, ranked by Goodreads readers. It's worth noting that this list is ranked by rating, so sequels may be out of chronological order. Beware of unwanted spoilers, and if you're looking for the most recent book, check out Grisham's 2022 novel, " Sparring Partners ."

The 20 best John Grisham books, ranked by their Goodreads ratings: 

Descriptions provided by Amazon and lightly edited for clarity and length.

20. "The Reckoning"

"The Reckoning," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

October 1946, Clanton, Mississippi.

Pete Banning was Clanton, Mississippi's favorite son — a decorated World War II hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning he rose early, drove into town, and committed a shocking crime. Pete's only statement about it — to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, to the jury, and to his family — was: "I have nothing to say." He was not afraid of death and was willing to take his motive to the grave.

John Grisham takes us on an incredible journey, from the Jim Crow South to the jungles of the Philippines during World War II; from an insane asylum filled with secrets to the Clanton courtroom where Pete's defense attorney tries desperately to save him. 

19. "A Painted House"

"A Painted House," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

Until that September of 1952, Luke Chandler had never kept a secret or told a single lie. But in the long, hot summer of his seventh year, two groups of migrant workers — and two very dangerous men — came through the Arkansas Delta to work the Chandler cotton farm. And suddenly mysteries are flooding Luke's world.

A brutal murder leaves the town seething in gossip and suspicion. A beautiful young woman ignites forbidden passions. A fatherless baby is born... and someone has begun furtively painting the bare clapboards of the Chandler farmhouse, slowly, painstakingly, bathing the run-down structure in gleaming white. And as young Luke watches the world around him, he unravels secrets that could shatter lives — and change his family and his town forever....

18. "The Brethren"

"The Brethren," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. The third for a career-ending drunken joyride.

Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong. Or they can use their time in prison to get very rich — very fast.

And so they sit, sprawled in the prison library, furiously writing letters, fine-tuning a wickedly brilliant extortion scam — while events outside their prison walls begin to erupt. A bizarre presidential election is holding the nation in its grips, and a powerful government figure is pulling some very hidden strings. For the Brethren, the timing couldn't be better. Because they've just found the perfect victim.

17. "Rogue Lawyer"

"Rogue Lawyer," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

On the right side of the law — sort of — Sebastian Rudd is not your typical street lawyer. His office is a customized bulletproof van, complete with Wi-Fi, a bar, a small fridge, and fine leather chairs. He has no firm, no partners, and only one employee: his heavily armed driver, who also so happens to be his bodyguard, law clerk, confidant, and golf caddie. 

Sebastian drinks small-batch bourbon and carries a gun. He defends people other lawyers won't go near: a drug-addled, tattooed kid rumored to be in a satanic cult; a vicious crime lord on death row; a homeowner arrested for shooting at a SWAT team that mistakenly invaded his house. Why these clients? Because Sebastian believes everyone is entitled to a fair trial — even if he has to bend the law to secure one.

16. "Camino Island"

"Camino Island," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a vault deep below Princeton University's Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, impossible to resist.

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in unsavory ventures.

Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer's block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous monetary offer convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Cable's circle of literary friends, to get close to the ringleader, to discover his secrets.

But soon Mercer learns far too much, and there's trouble in paradise.

15. "The Chamber"

"The Chamber," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.99

In the corridors of Chicago's top law firm: 26-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case.

Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances — except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.

While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets — including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's life... or cost Adam his.

14. "The Racketeer"

"The Racketeer," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

In the history of the United States, only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.

His body is found in his remote lakeside cabin. There is no sign of forced entry or struggle. Just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe — opened and emptied.

Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge's untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland.

On paper, Malcolm's situation isn't looking too good these days, but he's got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The FBI would love to know. And Malcolm Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price — especially information as explosive as the sequence of events that led to Judge Fawcett's death. And the Racketeer wasn't born yesterday.

13. "The Street Lawyer"

"The Street Lawyer," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant DC law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone.

A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm's plush offices. When it is all over, the man's blood is splattered on Michael's face — and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived — and where society's powerless need an advocate for justice.

But there's one break Michael can't make: from a secret that has floated up from the depths of Drake & Sweeney, from a confidential file that is now in Michael's hands, and from a conspiracy that has already taken lives. Now Michael's former partners are about to become his bitter enemies. Because to them, Michael Brock is the most dangerous man on the streets.

12. "The Confession"

"The Confession," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

An innocent man is about to be executed. Only a guilty man can save him.

In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, Travis Boyette abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.

Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what's right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

11. "The Testament"

"The Testament," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

In a plush Virginia office, a rich, angry old man is furiously rewriting his will. With his death just hours away, Troy Phelan wants to send a message to his children, his ex-wives, and his minions — a message that will touch off a vicious legal battle and transform dozens of lives.

Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his 11-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.

Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate goes crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman — pursued by enemies and friends alike — holds a stunning surprise of her own.

10. "The Rainmaker"

"The Rainmaker," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $4 

In a courtroom thriller, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America — and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam. In his final semester of law school, Rudy Baylor is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first "clients," Dot and Buddy Black.

Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by the huge company, and he just may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone's ever seen — and one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The problem is, Rudy's flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys — and powerful industries — in America.

9. "The Runaway Jury"

"The Runaway Jury," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.46

They are at the center of a multimillion-dollar legal hurricane: 12 men and women who have been investigated, watched, manipulated, and harassed by high-priced lawyers and consultants who will stop at nothing to secure a verdict. Now the jury must make a decision in the most explosive civil trial of the century, a precedent-setting lawsuit against a giant tobacco company. But only a handful of people know the truth: that this jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him.

He is known only as Juror #2. But he has a name, a past, and he has planned his every move with the help of a beautiful woman on the outside. Now, while a corporate empire hangs in the balance, while a grieving family waits, and while lawyers are plunged into a battle for their careers, the truth about Juror #2 is about to explode in a crossfire of greed and corruption — and with justice fighting for its life.

8. "The Pelican Brief"

"The Pelican Brief," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

To Darby Shaw, it was no more than a legal shot in the dark — a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment, it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder — a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust — an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate — to help her piece together the deadly puzzle.

Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.

7. "The Client"

"The Client," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

11-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark with knowledge of a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America.

Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. 

Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client — even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them both their lives.

6. "Sycamore Row" (Jake Brigance, #2)

"Sycamore Row," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

" A Time to Kill " is one of the most popular novels of our time. Now we return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial — a trial that will expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured history.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten will. It is an act that drags his adult children, a Black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County's most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.

The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?

5. "A Time to Kill" (Jake Brigance, #1)

"A Time to Kill," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.29

The life of a 10-year-old Black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless white men. The mostly white town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi, reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime — until the girl's father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own hands.

For 10 days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life — and then his own.

4. "The Guardians"

"The Guardians," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.27

In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues. There were no witnesses, no one with a motive. But the police soon came to suspect Quincy Miller, a young Black man who was once a client of Russo's. 

Quincy was tried, convicted, and sent to prison for life. For 22 years he languished in prison, maintaining his innocence. But no one was listening. He had no lawyer, no advocate on the outside. In desperation, he writes a letter to Guardian Ministries, a small nonprofit run by Cullen Post, a lawyer who is also an Episcopal minister.

Guardian accepts only a few innocence cases at a time. Cullen Post travels the country fighting wrongful convictions and taking on clients forgotten by the system. With Quincy Miller, though, he gets far more than he bargained for. Powerful, ruthless people murdered Keith Russo, and they do not want Quincy Miller exonerated.

3. "The Firm"

 "The Firm," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $7.45

When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage, and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray — doing 15 years in a Tennessee jail — already knew. You never get anything for nothing.

Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch's firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice — if he wants to live.

2. "The Judge's List" (The Whistler #2)

 "The Judge's List," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $13.80

In " The Whistler ," Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.

Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby's father was murdered 20 years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.

Suspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law.

He is a judge, in Florida — under Lacy's jurisdiction.

He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?

1. "A Time for Mercy" (Jake Brigance, #3)

"A Time for Mercy," available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him as the attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid 16-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake's fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

In what may be the most personal and accomplished legal thriller of John Grisham's storied career, we deepen our acquaintance with the iconic Southern town of Clanton and the vivid cast of characters that so many readers know and cherish. The result is a richly rewarding novel that is both timely and timeless, full of wit, drama, and — most of all — heart.

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John Grisham Books In Order

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The American south has long been a point of interest to historians as it was the place where slavery once boomed and racisim ran rampant. Although the land has been a place of much turmoil, some positive things have arisen for it, as it was in Jonesboro, Arkansas that John Grisham was born. He arrived in the world on February 8, 1955, when cotton was still a major product of the south. His father happened to be a cotton farmer at the time.

However, the family began to move around to different areas, still south of the Mason-Dixon Line, while Grisham was in his youth. They settled down again in Southaven, Mississippi and that is where the young John Grisham became determined to be a baseball player for his profession. However, his mother had different aspirations for her son and began grooming him for college, although she herself had never received a formal education.

Her efforts did prove fruitful, as John Grisham successfully attended and graduated from Mississippi State University and later law school, graduating from Ole Miss. After having childhood desire to become a MLB player, settling on a legal career was not a simple thing for John Grisham. He had changed majors three times while in college and switched jobs several times during his teenage and young adult years.

As a lawyer, Grisham also made changes, switching from being a tax lawyer to trial lawyer, stating a dislike for the burdensome “complexity and lunacy” tax lawyers often face. His career as a trial lawyer was never fated to last long as well. Having graduated from law school in 1983, Grisham was elected to his state’s House of Representatives that same year, serving the Democratic Party until 1990. His legal practice lasted a decade.

While hanging around the courts in 1984, Grisham met a young girl with an intriguing story to tell about a case in which she was involved. The things she told him about her life touched him so much that he began to write his first novel based on her story. It was published in 1989 and is called Time to Kill. As a new author, Grisham had difficulty finding a publisher for his first book. He finally found one that was willing to let him have a printing of 5,000 copies.

The day after his first novel was released, Grisham went straight back to writing, working on his second novel, without waiting to find out if he would be a success. His confidence apparently was well-founded because his second novel, The Firm, stayed on the Best Seller List for New York Times an impressive 47 weeks after its release and was the top selling novel for 1991. It was at that time that Grisham decided to leave legal practice and become a full time writer.

Throughout his writing career, John Grisham has seen many successes, starting with his very first book and continuing through each subsequent novel. He is the author behind many well-recognized titles, including The Pelican Brief, as well as The Rainmaker, The Racketeer, A Painted House, amongst several others.

For his great writing, Grisham has been honored with several awards, including the Distinguished Author Award named after Peggy V. Helmerich, the Galaxy British Book lifetime achievement award, the legal fiction award from Harper Lee, and the USC Scripter award. Nevertheless, Grisham’s writing has not solely focused on crafting novels for adult audiences. He has also written a series of legal thrillers geared at children and pre-teens.

Inside John Grisham Novels:

Two of the books Grisham is most well-known for also happen to be the very first two novels he ever released; The Firm and Time to Kill. The Firm, released in 1991, has sold more than seven million copies. It is the second novel that he wrote and is the gripping tale about a young man named Mitchell V. McDeere who, fresh out of law school, decides to work at a Memphis law firm, appeased by their generous offer of a high salary, new car, and nice house with low interest mortgage.

Soon after he arrives, two of his collogues at the firm die in a mysterious accident. During their memorial service, Mitch learns that there have been others who worked at the firm and mysteriously died. The information causes him to be very suspicious. His intuition is later validated when he gets approached by the FBI who wants his help in gathering evidence against those at the law firm, revealing the fact that they are actually involved in organized crime.

Grisham’s first novel, Time to Kill was the one based off his chance meeting with a young girl as he hung around the courts one day. The story is about a ten-year-old girl in the south who happens to be African American and gets raped by two racist white men. The girl’s father finds out the story of the attack on his daughter and realizes that a similar incident happened a while back.

In an effort to protect others from the same harm, he kills the two white men and is later arrested. He then calls his friend Jake to help, but the case is made more complicated by the KKK seeking revenge for the death of the two men. They start riots outside the courtroom, kill the frail husband of Jake’s assistant, wire Jake’s car with a bomb, and eventually burn his house down.

The Transformation of John Grisham Books Into Movies:

Grisham has experienced much success with the silver screen. More than eight of the novels he has written have been adapted into films and performed well at the box office. This includes The Firm, which became a film in 1993, and was later made into a TV series.

The movie starred Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Time to Kill hit box offices in 1996 and starred Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, Ashley Judd, and several other stars. Other novels written by Grisham that have become movies include, The Client in 1994, The Chamber in 1996, The Rainmaker in 1997, Mickey in 2004, and several others.

47 Responses to “John Grisham”

Love all Mr. Grisham’s books, but The Street Lawyer is one of my favorites. Carry on, Sir!

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John Grisham Discusses Supreme Court on ‘The View’

BY Michael Schaub • May 31, 2024

John Grisham stopped by The View to promote his latest novel, Camino Ghosts , but it was a comment about one of his older novels that raised some eyebrows.

Grisham’s latest book, his 50th, tells the story of a resort developer called Tidal Breeze that is desperate to get its hands on a barrier island; the lone resident of the island is determined not to let that happen. A critic for Kirkus called the novel “fine Grisham storytelling that his fans will enjoy.”

The View co-host Joy Behar asked Grisham, a former lawyer and Mississippi state representative, about the Supreme Court, which she noted has been plagued by scandals recently.

The audience laughed, prompting co-host Whoopi Goldberg to say, “Writing Part 2. He’s talking about writing Part 2.”

“It’s all fiction,” Grisham said. “Don’t get upset.”

He went on to say, “The court has never looked this bad in my lifetime. Some of the rulings, the ethical challenges—it went downhill in 2000 when five Republicans on the court chose to elect the president. That was the most political— Bush v. Gore —and that’s when it all started really going downhill. A 5-4 decision, and the court gets worse every term. I have no solution, because you can’t get rid of them. The solution is, make them all retire at the age of 75.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.

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The View hosts stress 'it's all fiction' as John Grisham says he considered writing more Supreme Court assassinations

"The court has never looked this bad," Grisham said on "The View," after noting that he "thought about" writing more Supreme Court deaths after "Pelican Brief."

Writer John Grisham prompted a swift clarification from The View cohosts when he suggested that the current state of the Supreme Court made him consider writing another book about the assassination of justices following The Pelican Brief .

The 69-year-old author appeared Wednesday on the talk show to promote his new book Camino Ghosts , which features View moderator Whoopi Goldberg as narrator of its audio edition. As the interview shifted to current affairs, Grisham said that he's "not really noted for accuracy" when it comes to reflecting real life, though panelist Joy Behar said she felt his work is "art imitating life" before asking him about upcoming projects.

"Life right now in the courtroom is getting a little scary. Let's take the Supreme Court right now. A lot of people have issues with them," the 81-year-old said. "Do you have any thoughts on that? Or maybe writing a book or making a movie out of that?"

Grisham reminded her of "a great book called The Pelican Brief , in which two Supreme Court justices were assassinated," before telling her that he's "thought about doing it again."

The show's studio audience laughed after Grisham's comment, though his words elicited a quick point of clarification from the cohosts.

"Writing part two. He's talking about writing part two," Goldberg said, turning to the crowd.

"It's all fiction," Grisham added. "It's all fiction," Sunny Hostin observed. "It's all fiction," Goldberg repeated.

"It's just fiction," Behar, too, stressed. "It's made-up stories!"

Still, Grisham continued, saying that “the court has never looked this bad, in my lifetime," citing "the rulings" and "the ethical challenges" as the basis for his assessment.

"It went downhill in 2000, when five Republicans on the court chose to elect the president. That was the most political," he said.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Grisham for comment.

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Grisham appeared at the end of an episode led by an interview with First Lady Jill Biden. In the year leading up to the November election, The View has welcomed several high-profile political guests on both sides of the aisle. In January, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared at the Hot Topics table to warn that "we should all be scared" of a potential second-term Trump presidency, months after Hillary Clinton issued a similar word of caution to viewers as she sat for an interview with the cohosts.

The View  airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on  ABC .

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View Hosts Jump In To Explain Guest John Grisham Did NOT Actually Say He Wanted to Assassinate Supreme Court Justices

T he hosts of The View quickly jumped in on Wednesday after their guest John Grisham appeared to refer to assassinating Supreme Court Justices.

Grisham appeared on the show to discuss his latest book Camino Ghosts , which is read by View co-host Whoopi Goldberg in the audiobook version. Grisham, who was previously a lawyer, at one point was asked by co-host Joy Behar about criticism of the Supreme Court in light of Roe v. Wade being overturned and ethical concerns and Grisham answered by saying he thought about writing a follow-up to The Pelican Brief , in which multiple Supreme Court justices are assassinated.

The Pelican Brief was adapted into a 1993 movie starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts .

“I wrote a great book called The Pelican Brief in which two Supreme Court Justices were assassinated, and I thought about doing it again,” Grisham said.

“No, no, no,” Behar quickly said.

“Writing part two! He’s talking about writing part two!” Goldberg added.

“It’s all fiction. Don’t get upset,” Grisham said as the hosts continued explaining his answer.

“It’s all fiction. It’s just made up stories,” Behar echoed.

Grisham argued the Supreme Court has “never looked this bad” and claimed it all went “downhill” after a 2000 decision settling a recount dispute in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore . The novelist recommended Supreme Court Justices retire after 75.

“It went downhill in 2000 when five Republicans on the court chose to elect a president,” he said.

First Lady Jill Biden had earlier joined The View and claimed that one more “Republican” in the court would strip all citizens of every right.

“Think of the Supreme Court for God’s sake. Talk about things getting worse? Can you imagine if we put any more Republicans on the Supreme Court? No!” she said. “We will lose all of our rights.”

Watch above via ABC.